Description: This startling novel reveals the tensions and triumphs of coming of age in a revolutionary time.
Review Quotes:
"An-sky brilliantly captures a week in the life of young Jewish intellectuals fleeing their tiny villages to find the possibility of personal growth in larger towns where the enlightenment has begun to work its way."--Jewish Book Council
"Michael R. Katz's translation renders another Russian literary gem into fluid and lively English. . . . The publication of Pioneers in English . . . appears at an auspicious moment, for readers today may be more receptive than ever to narratives that convey the richness, complexity, and diversity of Jewish life in times of dynamic and decisive change."--Marginalia
"Katz has done a fine job preserving the multi-lingual environment and conveying the speech of those heder boys now turned into messengers of enlightenment and radicalism . . . pulling from his translator's toolbox the appropriate instrument to render into English the twang of the Russian-Yiddish-Hebrew creole."--Brian Horowitz, author of Empire Jews: Jewish Nationalism and Acculturation in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Russia
"Pioneers demonstrates An-sky's sharp eye for detail, his clear gaze-frankly sympathetic though often ironic--at these provincial Jews . . . This book is unique in offering in English this sort of picture of the experiences of an important generation of Russian Jews. . . . A unique work of art and an important document of its time."--Gabriella Safran, author of Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk's Creator, S. An-sky